Published 4:21 am, Friday, November 8, 2013

Working long hours while living in your own home can be hard enough, but when it happens at a remote drill site or other distant location, sleepiness can lead to mistakes, equipment damage and even serious injury. A white paper commissioned by Target Logistics and written by sleep expert Nancy H. Rothstein makes this point and suggests remedies.

In the executive summary, the paper, entitled “Optimizing Sleep for an Optimal Workforce in the Oil, Gas and Mining Industries,” states, in regard to workers at remote sites, “…companies that provide their workers with lodging that offers optimal sleep comforts, along with tools to promote quality sleep, have seen both performance and economic benefits.”

Not only do oilfield workers face long, physically demanding workdays, they often rotate between day and night shifts and may work many days without any time off. Then, says Rothstein, “Too often, the ‘home’ they return to after a long day’s or night’s work lacks the facilities, comforts and amenities essential to their health and well-being. Instead, the facility they return to must be a place for rejuvenation, nourishment, camaraderie and — for more reasons than generally recognized — sleep.”

Performance, productivity and safety are among the top issues with sleep deprivation listed. Working 18 consecutive hours reduces all three, but Rothstein points out that consecutive nights of five to six hours of sleep will magnify the damage.

Since oifield workers operate heavy machinery, drive large trucks and handle huge lengths of pipe and other inventory, even a slight miscalculation or a split-second delay in reaction time can, and has, resulted in injury and even death. Rothstein argues that the costs of inadequate sleep and relaxation are too high for companies to ignore.

The paper states, “A study of construction workers in oil and gas projects in China, by Dr. Margaret Chan, illuminates this critical risk.

“Dr. Chan’s research showed that ‘previously identified factors like failure to use equipment or failure by individual workers to follow safety procedures are heavily influenced by fatigue. If you eliminate fatigue, you also eliminate other so-called causes of accidents. Previous research shows fatigue can cause performance impairment equivalent to or greater than 0.10 percent of blood alcohol concentration, a level deemed unacceptable for driving a crane or operating dangerous construction equipment or machinery.’”

The best sleep environment must be dark, cool, quiet and comfortable, she maintains. Regarding darkness, even dim light from a clock or a few rays of sun leaking around a curtain can disrupt sleep, she says, so blackout curtains should be in every bedroom on a remote location — especially for those who work nights and sleep days.

Blue light in particular signals the body that it is time to wake up or to stay awake. Light from computers and televisions is often skewed toward this end of the light spectrum, making a pre-bedtime TV movie or Facebook session a less-than-ideal way to end the day. To counteract the blue-light effect, Rothstein recommends blue-light blocking glasses, a sort of specialized sun glasses. They could also be worn by workers returning home from the night shift, so that the early morning sun would not wake them up just when they need to be going to bed.

As for the other sleep criteria, if quiet cannot be achieved, earplugs are an option. A cool room, no warmer than 68°F is ideal. And, of course, a comfortable bed is vital.

The paper makes the case that these things are not just up to the employer. The employee can contribute by avoiding alcohol or caffeine before bedtime, engaging in relaxing activities in that time frame and by going to bed in time to get their required eight or so hours of sleep.

These suggestions are not just appropriate for the oil industry. It will not be a surprise that sleep deprivation is not limited to the oilfield. Rothstein cites a 2008 CDC study estimating that up to 30 percent of the U.S. workforce is sleep deprived. So everyone can benefit from doing what it takes to get a good night’s sleep.